Usain Bolt, whose 9.58 seconds world record for the 100 meters has stood for 16 years, believes he could have run 9.42 seconds in the carbon-plated “super-spikes” currently used by today’s sprinters.
The Jamaican set his record at the 2009 world championships in Berlin, surpassing his own 9.69 record from the Beijing Olympics the previous year.
His record has now lasted longer than Jim Hines’s 9.95, which stood for 14 years after being set at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.
Research by Puma, the company that sponsored him, predicted that Bolt could have run 9.42 seconds in modern shoes, a prediction Bolt fully endorsed at an event before the world championships in Tokyo. “I fully agree,” he said.
“Someone who continued after I retired was Shelly-Anne Fraser-Pryce and I saw what she did – she got faster with the spikes,” Bolt said. “I probably would have run way faster if I’d continued and if I knew that spikes would have got to that level maybe I would have, because it would have been great to compete at that level and running that fast.”
Bolt’s compatriot Kishane Thompson recently ran 9.75 seconds at the Jamaican championships in June, making him the sixth-fastest man of all time and recording the fastest time in a decade.4 However, Bolt stated that he is not concerned about his record being broken anytime soon. “I think the talent is there and those who are coming up will do well but, at this present moment, I don’t think they will be able to break the world record,” he said.
Bolt retired in 2017 with six Olympic and seven World Championship individual golds in the 100m and 200m. Since his double victory at the 2016 Rio Olympics, no Jamaican man has won a global sprint title.5 Thompson came close to ending that streak when he was narrowly defeated by Noah Lyles in last year’s Olympic 100m final. Bolt believes either Thompson or his compatriot Oblique Seville could win the 100m on Sunday.
“I think we have a very good chance this year. Kishane and Oblique have really showed this season that they’re really doing extremely well,” Bolt said. “I’m looking forward to it, I mean they should be one-two because they’ve proved they are running fast times so it’s just all about execution. So I’m happy to go into the stadium and see and hopefully I’ll be able to present the gold medal to one of them.”
Tokyo will be the first global athletics event Bolt has attended since his retirement in 2017.6 Whether he presents the medals may depend on who wins, especially if it is the defending champion, Lyles. Bolt said he has no issues with the American, despite a previous social media dispute and Lyles’s comment that he had Thompson “in his pocket” earlier this season.
“I don’t think Noah is as crazy as dealing with Justin (Gatlin), so for me it’s no different,” Bolt said of his former rival. “I think Gatlin over the years, we pushed back and forth, but he was a different breed because he came up in the era where trash talking was just normal to everybody. As you know I never listened to anybody, I know when I’m preparing and I’m ready you can say whatever you want you’re not going to beat me so I’m always focusing so it would never be a problem.”